MANILA - The National Economic and Development Authority on Friday again pushed for the creation of the an institutionalized Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DEPDEV).

NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan creating the DEPDEV would strengthen the agency’s capacities to support the Philippine Development Plan. 

Balisacan earlier told a Senate hearing that the reorganization of NEDA into a department would help address issues such as the inconsistency of public policies; misalignment between national and regional plans; limited linkages among planning, investment programming, budgeting, monitoring & evaluation, and feedback to planning; and the lack of continuity of plans and programs. 

The NEDA chief said the move to become a full-fledged department will institutionalize the monitoring and evaluation of priority programs, activities, and projects (PAPs) by government units across the country, regardless of the priorities of the current administration. 

“Evaluation is also one that we are trying to strengthen because we really don’t have a systematic process of seeing whether the projects that are being supported are working or not, are achieving their objectives or not… That’s a major feature we want to do here so that we can ensure that the projects being funded by the people’s money are actually achieving their objectives,” said Balisacan.